Return to the Clancyverse

 

I’ve written several times in these here electronic pages how I devoured Tom Clancy’s work way back in the 90s, how the books were completely different from anything I had read up to that point (classic science fiction, King, and Koontz, mostly), how technically intelligent they read, how they reflected competent, heroic, patriotic men and women. As well as real evil in the world. They were eye-opening to young me, and I burned through nine of them from 1994 to 2001, with the majority in the first three years.

Anyway, I had such a blast reading The Bear and the Dragon this time last year. I bought it for my stepfather for his birthday. It was such a change of pace from the heady, hefty readings I was immersed in at that time. I spotted two Clancy hardcovers, Patriot Games and Without Remorse, at a library book sale and picked them up for two bucks apiece.

Then, an idea came to me.

Why not read through the entire Jack Ryan series again? After all, it’s been, wow, nearly thirty years, and I enjoyed Bear and Dragon so much. After a little thought decided to jump headfirst back in to the Clancyverse, but in a unique way this time.

Now I would read the books in chronological order. Not the order the books were published, because Clancy messed around with the timeline of his main character. No, I’d read it in the chronologic order of the internal story. Start off with young Jack Ryan, then middle-aged Jack Ryan, then elder statesman Jack Ryan. It sounded quite interesting and appealing to me.

Here is the order of the books in the story’s internal chronology. The parentheses are the year of publication:

 

Without Remorse (1993)

Patriot Games (1987)

Red Rabbit (2002)

The Hunt for Red October (1984)

The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988)

Clear and Present Danger (1989)

The Sum of All Fears (1991)

Debt of Honor (1994)

Executive Orders (1996)

Rainbow Six (1998)

The Bear and the Dragon (2000)

 

In Without Remorse, Jack is a teen and it’s his father, Emmett Ryan, a detective in Baltimore, who’s more of a character, though even he is a secondary character. The novel is basically the origin story of CIA agent John Clark, played by Willem Dafoe in the Harrison Ford movies. It takes place in the late-60s / early 70s. Then the timeline skips in Patriot Games to 1983 / 1984. The final books, Executive Orders and Rainbox Six, take place in the late 90s and catch-up to the publication dates.

So excluding Bear and Dragon, that gives me ten books to read. Each is a doorstop to be honest; anywhere from 500 to 800 pages. That gives me about 7,000 pages to read, but that’s okay, because they are still page-turners for me. I imagine finishing them sometime in the late summer, and that’s acceptable because I am enjoying them immensely so far. I may post later how different they now appear to me.

I’m currently on the third book, Red Rabbit, the one and only book I have not read during the original go-round. The first two, Without Remorse and Patriot Games, each took 12 days to read this past month. This one’s taking a little longer because I am reading nonfiction alongside it. But I’m not looking at it as a race.

Red Rabbit has Jack beginning his career in the CIA. He is a rising star but hasn’t yet proven himself, which happens in The Hunt for Red October. I’m a little over halfway through, and the powers-that-be are aligning Jack to play an important role at a decisive plot point. This book’s more spycraft and espionage than Bear, Remorse, and Patriot Games were, more like a Robert Ludlum novel, which is interesting in and of itself. Kinda like an introductory course to a John Le Carre novel (whose works are on my bucket list). The first half has been slow and steadily building, with real-life figures such as Yuri Andropov as characters. I sense an action-packed climax coming though.

Anyway, that’s where I stand on my fiction reading. Professor Tolkien is still lurking about in the distance, in the mud in the mire with his boots on, smoking a pipe looking over the green be-sheeped countryside, patiently waiting for Hopper to get his act together. Hopper is thick in a nostalgia binge right now, but hopes to visit Middle-earth in the fall and winter.

Happy readings!

 

Mathematical Jerk Redux

 

I was scrolling through Twitter over the weekend and saw this pic: 

 with the phrase, “DON’T BE A …” right in front of it.

 

Yes! It took me a while to decrypt this (then I had to resort to google) but this is the mathematical expression of a Jerk.

 

No, not that kind of a jerk, not the kind the witty Twitter user was referencing. This kind of a jerk is what you’d experience if you were speeding up the highway and suddenly a force, say a huge gust of wind, pushes your vehicle quickly and unexpectedly to one side.

 

Now, “speed” here is a relative term. In physics, it’s called “velocity” because direction is generally though not necessarily indicated. Velocity is distance per time. It can be expressed in an equation relating these two variable. Throw some Calculus 101 in the mix, and you can obtain what’s called the second derivate of this equation. Since velocity is the change in distance over time, the second derivative represents the change in velocity over time. It’s called acceleration. Now, the third derivative (if you apply the derivative-obtaining technique to the second derivative) represents the change in acceleration over time. This is called “jerk.”

 

Like the beard-second, like the jiffy, math and physics has some interesting and humorous * terms. I had known about jerk from my calculus classes back in the early 90s, but had forgotten. However, I have never heard the technical terms “snap,” “crackle”, and “pop” in mathematics. Now I have and now you, if you have followed me up to this point, have also.

 

For the layman,

Acceleration is the change in velocity over time

Jerk is the change in acceleration over time

Snap is the change in jerk over time

Crackle is the change in snap over time

and

Pop is the change in crackle over time

 

And this is the Euler’s-honest truth!

 

Edit: After writing and publishing this, I see that I had done a similar blog post on it, here, on January 14, 2011, over thirteen years ago! It’s a great exhibit about the fickleness of memory. If you have a mathematical bent, I’d recommend reading that short post, ’cuz I particularly like the analogy used way back then.

Dallas Eclipse 2024

 

Just experienced the solar eclipse from my backyard. It was amazing!

Both the Mrs. and I were working from home today. In the early morning the skies were a bit overcast, and I was more than a bit worried. But when the eclipse officially began at 12:18 the sky had cleared except for some wispy white cotton balls. I donned my eclipse glasses and reclined in the patio chair, going in and out of the house every ten or fifteen minutes as I was working in my upstairs office.

A crowd had gathered in the park across the street, a very loud and festive atmosphere. I went back outside just as my wife was wrapping up a Zoom call. The ambient light dimmed to some level approximating fifteen minutes before sunset and the temperature dropped at least ten degrees. The winds picked up and the birds began their anxious chirpings. Charlie sat out with us but remained blissfully unaware of the eclipse, focused on protecting his turf from the roaming trash and recycling trucks that prowl around every Monday.

At 12:40 CST totality began, and we removed our special glasses and experienced the awesomeness of a total eclipse that no second-hand images can truly convey. Applause from the park echoed to my backyard. I took it all in: the sky a rich deep blue, the moon a cool charcoal, and the silvery corona of the sun brilliant and waving behind it. I had the distinct impression of something watching me – is this what our primitive ancestors felt during totality? An angry god casting judgment down upon them? Or was it a doorway of sorts – into a different universe, a parallel dimension? Intriguing no matter how you think of it.

This was the third eclipse I saw, but by far the most successful. The first I experienced in 1992 in New Jersey, but had no glasses; I only felt the drop in temperature and the kicked-up wind and the birds cries. In 2017, down on the beach in Hilton Head, SC, clouds obscured the eclipse past the point of viewing. This is the first time I saw the corona during totality live, and it was incredibly amazing, if ever so brief.

Some pics – and yes, I know the iPhone is not designed for such photography, but I did the best with what I had on hand.

 

Eclipse Nerd ready for a once (twice) in a lifetime event

View from my office window of crowd of 50-75 in the park across the street

View from my backyard ... 8 minutes before totality

Totality - best I could do with my iPhone

My Dinner with My Dinner with Andre

Found myself on my own last night for a few hours, a rare occurrence believe it or not. So I picked up some Chinese food and settled down into a movie night as I was pretty fatigued from a full day of work chased by mowing the back yard in early-April 85-degree Texas weather.

I settled on a flick that’s been on my radar for many years. And by that I mean I noticed it once a year, said, “I really should give that a watch,” and then promptly forgot about it. The movie in question was My Dinner with Andre, a 1981 “avant garde” film. I put avant garde in quotes because while the phrase generally connotes something unusual or experimental, I think most civilians regard it as, well, crappy and unwatchable. My Dinner with Andre is unusual and experimental, but if you have a bookish mind, a mind for ideas, I think it just might appeal to you.

(After all, most of Hollywood’s production since 2015 or so have been crappy and unwatchable, but we don’t label those flicks as avant garde.)

Anyway, the movie’s running time is 1 hour and 52 minutes. Aside from a few minutes of introductory setup and a minute or so of concluding wrap up, the entirety of the movie is a conversation at a table in a restaurant between two men, Wallace and Andre. Both are in the arts – Wallace is an unsuccessful struggling playwright, and Andre is/was a theater director, currently returning after a several-year hiatus to discover what that something is he feels is lacking within himself.

It would be impossible to summarize this conversation, but I found myself riveted. It flows along many intertwining currents. After some pleasantries and re-acquainting verbal dances, the talk delves into art, the theater, experimental theater, globe travelling for new experiences, and before we realize it we are discussing, and eventually debating, philosophy, existentialism, the individual as one and as part of society, spirituality, and what it means to become an authentic human being. Heidegger comes up, physics and math comes up somewhat peripherally, as does the Little Prince and Saint-Exupery, synchronicity, messages from the future, and the fight for meaning and transcendence when the damn mailbox is overflowing with bills. With all that on the menu, I was hooked.

The movie was written by, well, Wallace and Andre, who play fictionalized versions of themselves and references real people and situations in their talk. At the end of the conversation, the restaurant has emptied, and I felt a little empty myself. And after the last minute of Wallace’s monologue (he narrates the beginning and ending), I actually had goose bumps up and down my arms, particularly the last four words he speaks.

A+, but a strict warning that it is not for the average; prerequisite in self-dissatisfaction and an openness to engage and evaluate new ideas is a definite requirement.

And for the record, I feel that, like just about everything in life, the real answer lies somewhere between the extremes. Were I to place myself with these two men at this table in this restaurant, I’d probably fall somewhere around 60% Andre and 40% Wallace.

Easters with Chuck

 

We had a nice, relaxing Easter down here in Texas, our third. True, we miss the old traditions, dining and family visits back in the northeast, but down here I’ve turned the holiday into one of recuperating and recharging. My faith has been growing stronger these past few years, due in part to some combination of circumstance, the church we joined, and some spiritual practices I’ve, er, been practicing. So that angle is covered. I focus on trying to wring some inner strength to take on the next day and keep on keeping on.

I’ve been taking Good Friday off since I’ve been down here. In the past with my girls we’d visit the darkened church and return home to watch The Passion of the Christ. But due to scheduling beyond my control, my oldest daughter was six thousand miles away in Ireland and my youngest was with my wife for six hours at one of those giant Texas fairs Texans are so fond of having.

I decided to watch Ben-Hur by myself then. It’s been sitting on our DVD pile for almost a year since I found it at a thrift shop for $2. I’ve always wanted to get the girls into it, or at least experience it, the same way we do when we watch The Ten Commandments every Easter afternoon. But such was not to be the case. Which was all right with me. I stretched out with a blanket and popped the DVD in and watched it nonstop – three hours and forty-five minutes of Judah Ben-Hur obtaining his vengeance upon Messala and encountering Christ several times throughout his life.

Sunday afternoon, for something like the twelfth year in a row, we watched Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. True, it felt off because Little One was not here, but it was still enjoyable. We can anticipate somewhere around 75% of the lines before their spoken and a jaded Patch still enjoys the dated – though spectacular at the time – special effects.

Bottom line is I spent nearly eight hours with Charlton Heston this Easter weekend.

Which got me to thinking … how many movies have I seen with this guy in it? I remember him a lot when I was a kid – he seemed to be in so many awesome science fiction flicks. He was confident, boisterous, in-charge and non-nonsense and even a bit hammy. Even with a jaunty scarf around his neck trying to figure out what that weird flaky food is made out of.

... Soylent Green is ... ?!?!?!?!!!

So now I had to pull his filmography and go through it. Turns out, to greater or lesser extents, I’ve seen Mr. Heston in 15 movies.

The most viewed one is, obviously, The Ten Commandments, clocking in at about 15 viewings. Ben-Hur I’ve only seen about five times or so. That’s it for the epics, though there are a handful more of his I’d like to watch and will have to put on my Saturday afternoon viewing list.

The fun part of his filmography are all the films I devoured as a kid. First of all, The Planet of the Apes. I must’ve watched that a dozen times, if not more. Channel 7 ABC was always having a “planet of the apes” theme week of 4:30 movies. I watched it with the girls when they were single digits and I even watched it with Little One a few months ago – at her suggestion – before she went abroad. The sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, has a Heston cameo in the last 15 minutes of the film, so I count that too.

The Omega Man was another favorite – eight times – as was Soylent Green, though the latter to a lesser extent – four times. My friend once called me up to tell me Omega Man was on, just after telling me about it when we were hanging out earlier in the day. And though not strict SF, I watched the movie Earthquake a bunch of times too in the late 70s.

A pair of military themed Heston movies were always on HBO in the late 70s and I watched them as much as I could: Midway and Gray Lady Down. Probably ten times, for each. After I met my wife and began my cinephilia, we watched Touch of Evil, The Big Country and The Wreck of the Mary Deare, each a single time and all needing another viewing. Touch of Evil was particularly memorable. That goes on the Saturday list, too.

Rounding out my 15 are films in which he has small parts, In the Mouth of Madness and Tombstone. I watched Madness about a year back but haven’t seen Tombstone in about 20 years, though when it came out I saw it at least a half-dozen times.

But getting back to my family’s Ten Commandments tradition: in some bizarre way Charlton Heston has become the Voice of Easter for me. I am fine with that. We get some confident, in-charge no-nonsense hamminess in some very riveting, wholesome and enlightening entertainment. I think when the girls ask me what I want for Christmas this year, I’ll say, “Nothing more than my girls so sit and watch Ben-Hur with their dad!” They’ll laugh and say no way and buy me a book and a record, and I’ll say, “Just wait ’til next year!”

 

Happy Easter!

 

I want to wish a Happy Easter to all my family, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and co-workers, even the 10 to 20 people who anonymously visit here every day!

Often I feel weighed down by life, by circumstances, by choices made and not made, but today I feel wonderful and I wish that wonderful part on all of you!

More details to follow tomorrow or Tuesday, a recap and / or some thoughts and some updates

Christ is King

 

Gounod's Romeo et Juliet

 

 

The Mrs. surprised me a few weeks back with tickets to the opera Romeo et Juliet. With the exception of discovering and purchasing an antique triple-record recording of Turandot in an antique store back in January, I haven’t really listened to any opera in six or seven years. Since we’ve moved down here to Texas in the summer of ’21, I had a hard time getting into anything musical. Then, I had a six-month fling and re-acquaintance with the music of Yes, and then, about a year-and-a-half ago, I started collecting classical music records on a whim, which I listen to on an almost daily basis.

 

So I was quite excited with this upcoming event.

 

The last time the wife and I attended the opera was to see La Boheme at Lincoln Center in New York City, a Christmas present for me from her. This was early January of 2017. While not a big fan of the music per se, I found the sets phenomenally imaginative and the performances incredible. Two intermissions allowed us to stretch our legs and quaff some flutes of champagne. During one of those intermissions I turned around and Nicolas Cage was standing directly behind me, all alone, just soaking in the atmosphere. It was all I could do to keep my wife from engaging him in conversation (as I got the vibe he wanted to be alone), but in retrospect I should have let her pounce.

 

Anyway, I was looking forward to a little Dallas culture. We’d been to the city’s classical enclave before, to see Little One in her final performance on stage with her classmates at the Dallas Symphony one afternoon. I had just purchased a new suit and a couple of shirts, so we all got snazzed up and motored down to Dallas, a thirty mile trip directly south, after making sure Patch was safe and secure and had supper ready and waiting to be reheated.

 

First we had a delicious early dinner at a great little spot we found and often take the girls for celebrations. Then off to the show itself, at the Winspear Opera House, a few minutes’ drive away. True, we did have nosebleed seats, and also true, it was extremely claustrophobic with the narrow seating, and further true, the degree of elevation gave me a slight vertiginous feeling. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.

 

My copy of the Romeo and Juliet playbill, 

with the opera record I bought the following week 

in the background.

Now, it doesn’t compare to a New York City production. There was only one set, which had to make do for everything from a castle celebration, the fields beyond the city walls, and Juliet’s bedroom. But they made it work with inventive lighting, even though it gave the whole thing more than a slight nod to (much despised) post-modernism. The choice of clothing was interesting too – the Capulets dressed in a cross between Southern Confederate haute couture meets Star Trek: The Next Generation, while the Montagues were garbed in 1930s Prohibition gangster threads. A gun was used to kill Tybalt. There was a female cast in a relationship with the head nurse, either in an attempt to be “edgy” or maybe the role calls for a mezzo-soprano, I dunno. The cast was multi-racial and multi-ethnic, which was okay for me since this was definitely a meritocratic venture.

 

The only prior experience I had with Gounod was listening to the opera Faust for two weeks borrowed from the library, something like fifteen years ago. I don’t remember anything about it, except a vague feeling I liked it. To these admittedly amateur ears, opera falls into two broad categories. Is the music in an opera stand-alone, or is it only to strictly support the singing? I’m more a fan of the former, which is why I prefer Wagner over Verdi, the latter of whom I consider a master of the second category. Gounod, to me, is the French Verdi. The music was quite good, but I couldn’t hum anything afterwards.

 

None if this is to disparage the vocal performances. Juliet and Romeo were both phenomenal. Juliet in particular, especially in her ability to sing and project while laying down in her bed, running, dancing, you name it. They’re not just standing still on stage belting it out. Romeo was fighting, running up and down stairs, writhing on the floor at one point, all while singing perfectly in key to the entire opera house. That part was simply amazing.

 

There was one intermission, only 20 minutes in length so we could not stray too far from our seats. Alas, no celebrity sightings – didn’t bump into Jerry Jones or Matthew McConaughey or Mark Cuban. Regardless, it was quite an enjoyable experience. Looking forward to a nifty gift of tickets to the symphony this Christmas. And I will stay open to exploring more of Charles Gounod’s works. Might listen to his Symphony No. 2 in Eb over the weekend one night while everyone’s asleep in the house.

 

Happy listening all!

 

What I Took from Gibbon

 

Just some ideas here, none really fully fleshed out or truly deep. Some observations I had while reading The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, when I took the time to write them down. Something to review should I ever take up and finish the book, which I probably won’t do unless I suddenly become independently wealthy. (😊)

 

* I started The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on January 18, intending to finish my two-volume “Great Works of the Western World” set by May 18. This was to be while my oldest daughter was studying abroad in Italy. To do this I would have to read ten double-columned pages a day (there are something like 1,270 of these pages to get through.)

 

* This turned out to be a bit too ambitious. The work is divided into six volumes, and I managed to get through the first two, 435 double-column pages, before eye strain kicked in hard. Head-ache hard. So I stopped one-third of the way in, and believe me, I didn’t like giving it up. But better to live to read another day; this was not a hill I was ultimately willing to die on. Or, rather, go blind on.

 

* The theme of the work, to me: The history of mankind is one of never-ending warfare. Peace is an anomaly. Such is the nature of this fallen world.

 

* Gibbon calls Genghis Khan “Zingis”. I love the throwback spelling. Much like the 18th- and 19th century term “Hindoo” for Hindu, and like Lovecraft referring to Eskimos as “Esquimaux”. Oddly-spelled wyrds fascinate me.

 

* Names of the various Roman territories, such as Scythia, Dacia, Sarmatia, and others, gave the whole work a “fantasy world feel.” Not sure if it’s ever been done before (maybe by Turtledove or Saberhagen), but man is the Roman Empire a setting ripe for fantasy fiction.

 

* The first few chapters ended with some variation of the words “… the downfall of the Roman Empire.” I thought this a neat literary device, very modern for a work written near the end of the 18th century. Would every chapter end in such a manner? But this was soon to be not the case as I quickly discovered. Oh well.

 

* Gibbon, at least Gibbon the historian, is not a Christian. He struck me as a solid proto-Nietzschean. I wonder if Friedrich read The History of the Decline as a young man. Gibbon has mad love for emperors traditionally reviled by Christians, such as Julian “the Apostate” and Diocletian, to name the most prominent.

 

* Even though Gibbon is noted for being one of the earliest historians to rely solely on primary sources (the History has an extensive, exhaustive footnote section – 425 of those double-space pages), modern historians consider it rife with error and subjective opinion. I chuckled realizing that one could go so far as to refer to it as “fan fiction.”

 

* Lots of new words, but the only one I (sadly) jotted down was “animadversion.” Dictionary.com defines it as “an unfavorable or censorious comment” or “the act of criticizing.” Synonyms include “accusation,” “faultfinding”, “slur.” A lot of animadversion was slung between the emperors, co-emperors, and their senators.

 

* Trivia tidbit: the epoch of the Roman Empire was the only time in history that the entire shore of the Mediterranean Sea was ruled by a single entity.

 

* Christianity owes a lot to the reign of Constantine (the whole making Christianity the state religion and all), but he was no saint. The most egregious of his crimes was having his eldest son, Crispus, murdered.

 

* No political correctness here: “To these real terrors they added the surprise and abhorrence which were excited by the shrill voice, the uncouth gestures, and the strange deformity of the Huns. These savages of Scythia were compared to the animals who walk very awkwardly on two legs, and to the misshapen figures which were often placed on the bridges of antiquity. They were distinguished from the rest of the human species by their broad shoulders, flat noses, and small black eyes, deeply buried in the head … a fabulous origin was assigned, worthy of their form and manners, that the witches of Scythia, who, for their foul and deadly practices, had been driven from society, had copulated in the desert with infernal spirits, and that the Huns were the offspring of this execrable conjunction.” Sounds like orcs.

 

* More trivia: two elite Legions frequently mentioned were called the Jovians and the Herculians.

 

* The period which the first two volumes of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire cover is from the reign of Marcus Aurelius to that of Valentinian, AD 180 to 375.

 

* It’s best to read with one’s interior voice mimicking that of Sir Winston Churchill. Slow, yes, but so much more entertaining and rewarding.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

 

 

Little One posing in Ireland at the cliffs of Moher, 

four hundred feet above the Atlantic, 

over the weekend.

Oppenheimer Cleaned Up

 

Last night at the Oscars. We didn’t watch, of course, but I did see the movie with the Mrs. back in July. When I read the news this morning, here’s what I texted her:

2024 Batting Average

 

It fluctuates somewhere around .800 and .850.

 

Not bad.

 

This has nothing to do with baseball, by the way. It has everything to do with New Year’s resolutions.

 

Now, I love the idea of setting New Year’s resolutions. Not so much practicing them, though. Usually, if I’m lucky and dedicated enough, my resolution will last past the first weekend of the New Year. Maybe a whole week, week-and-a-half. Then, poof, it vanishes into the ether from whence it came.

 

Not so with 2024’s batch. In fact, I’ve had so much success I’ve been hesitant about tooting my own horn for fear of jinxing myself. But since I don’t believe in jinxes and such, I’m here to tout my resolutionary success in these electronic pages.

 

I made four resolutions on December 31st, after ruminating on them for some time. Two dealt with my physical health, one a stubborn habit I’ve had for a long, long time that I feel is time to go, and a third is a spiritual discipline I’ve been interested in and now have taken up.

 

These last two, the stubborn habit and the spiritual discipline, I am keeping under wraps for the time being. But I have been taking daily actions, daily practice, and so far I am batting one thousand on these two important-to-me issues.

 

The second two I’ll publicize.

 

First, everyone’s favorite New Years resolution (after going to the gym but in the same vein) – lose the excess weight.

 

I’ve been 25 pounds over my ideal weight for at least a decade, maybe longer. Sure, I can lose five pounds with effort, but then I gain it back a few weeks later. Eighteen months ago I lost ten pounds for my awesome doctor down here in Texas, kept it off for a month, and gradually put it all back on.

 

As of this morning I am minus-7 from my January 1 weight. And really just by cutting back on seconds, portion-size, and grazing. Still eating the same stuff, but less of it and less frequently. Three pounds a month. Not bad. At this rate I’ll hit my goal around Labor Day.

 

The second “physical health” resolution I came up with was – to give up soda. And I have! One thousand percent batting on this issue. In the past I’d average 1½ or 2 sodas a day. A dozen sodas a week, something like 650 eight-ounce cans of Diet Coke and Diet Dr Pepper a year. After reading so much bad about soda consumption over the years, I’ve finally stopped. Haven’t had a can or bottle in nearly ten weeks.

 

So I’m batting .850 regarding my 2024 New Years resolutions. Some points off for cheating and zig-zagging on my weight loss promise, but otherwise perfect with the other three.

 

Pray for me!!!

 

Coming Soon!

 

Very busy at work and at home of late, but I am working on some posts to appear in the near future:

 

 

- I’ve been reading and watching a lot about Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme after watching the HBO movie The Wizard of Lies.

 

- The Mrs. bought us tickets to see Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet this weekend. Last time I went to the opera we rubbed elbows with Nicolas Cage. Who will we meet this time?

 

- I have a list of about a dozen items of interest (at least, to me and my warped mind) regarding Gibbon’s History and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

 

- My take on True Detective Season One (Yes, I know, always late to the party…)

 

- Progress on my New Years resolutions – I’m 100% perfect with three of them and somewhat sporadically successful with a fourth.

 

- And more!

 

And February's a Wrap!

 

Mr. Kipple Goes to Budapest

 

All right. It’s time to get this off my chest. It’s been sitting there over four decades, since I was put a poor confused lad navigating the mean streets of middle school. True, many years have gone by where I haven’t thought one iota about this, but it is also true that, from time to time, it does revisit me and haunt me.

 

In 1980 Mr. Kipple was my social studies teacher in eighth grade. He was a fun, young teacher, small in stature but a student favorite, fairly easygoing and innovative. For example, he assigned us seating in reverse alphabetical order, a fantastic novelty for me, whose last name begins with an a followed by a c, who sat in the front desk on the left or right in 99 percent of my classes. He had a friendly, curious demeanor, kept us laughing, and gave us unique projects over the course of the semester.

 

One of the more basic “fun” projects was for each student had to select any city, anywhere in the world, to research and prepare a report about it. For some bizarre reason – or maybe for no reason at all – I chose the Hungarian city of Budapest. And for a less bizarre reason, I attacked this project with my usual modus operandi – I waited until the last minute. After burning some midnight oil the night before it was due, I had the horrifying realization I didn’t have enough material.

 

Remember, this was a quarter-century before the internet. We did our research in the library. Not having access to a library at 10 pm on a Sunday night, I was at a loss of what to do. So I fudged some facts, small things, little items I think would fall between the cracks and would not be caught by Mr. Kipple. After all, he had 29 other cities to visit via his students’ reports.

 

A week or so later he bounced around class excited to talk about our reports. They were all very, very good, he noted, very interesting and informative. We’d be tested on the information we were about to discuss and review that afternoon.

 

Can you see where this is going?

 

He had a huge checklist he wanted to go over based on the “cool stuff” he gleaned from our research. Thank God he did not make each one of us stand up and read them. Instead, he picked on random people and complimented them for this piece of information, that factoid, this legend, that myth, this stat.

 

Then he called my name, and studying the paper in his hand, asked me if Budapest really did mean “the land at the fork of the rivers in ancient Magyar.” I turned white as a ghost and gulped and nodded. With a faraway look in his eyes, Mr. Kipple uttered but one word: “Neat!”

 

Now, Wikipedia tells me that the etymology of “Budapest” has something to do with the merging of two names, Buda and Pest, both probably Roman Empire names either of ancient rulers or fortifications. Less certain is that idea they derive from the Turkic word for “branch, twig” and the Slavic word for “cave.” That night in 1980 when I was stumped for facts, I noticed that the Danube ran through Budapest, and thought that “the land at the fork of the rivers” would be a great translation.

 

I lied academically for the first of only two times in my life. I felt awful. But the worse was to come. Later in the week we were tested on the class review of all our city reports, and two-thirds down the page was the following question:

 

22. This city derives its name from the Hungarian phrase “the land at the fork of the rivers”: ______________________ .

 

Oh no! Not only have I deceived my teacher, but through me twenty-nine of my fellow students were also fed and learned falsified knowledge, even though they may have promptly forgot the origin of the word “Budapest” over the subsequent years and decades.

 

Unlike the other time when I faked my way through an essay exam on Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, which I made amends for by actually reading the novel 20 years later (and a half-dozen other Dickensian works since), I do not see how I can restore balance over this deceit. So, suffice it to say, this is my mea culpa. I can only hope that it was never a secret dream of Mr. Kipple’s to vacation in the Hungarian capital, and if it was, hope that he was never laughed out of a tavern in that noble city for disrespecting the origin of its name.

 

Book-Beaten

 

 

Well, this is a first.

 

And it’s kinda embarrassing.

 

A book has defeated me.

 

Sure, probably a half-dozen or so books I start each year don’t move me. So with a “Life’s too short to read a bad book,” I set it aside with all due reverence and respect. Some I realize I am not ready for, and place atop a pile to revisit at some point in the future. Others I realize I will never be ready for, and return them for pennies at the used book shops. And a tiny percentage gall me so bad I simply toss them in the trash (this has only happened twice, though).

 

But I’m kinda embarrassed to admit that, yes, Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has beaten me. Not for reasons that you might think. I still enjoy the topic immensely. I’ve learned Gibbon’s foibles and prejudices, and I’m okay with them. I just can’t physically read the book.

 

Yes, you read that right.

 

Over the past week or so I’ve been going to bed with terrible headaches. Centered at the front of my brain. My eyes, specifically. From about eight p.m. on I can’t read at all, whether it’s my daily spiritual reading, whether its my side read, and especially if it’s Gibbon.

 

The version of The History of the Decline I am currently reading is from the Great Books of the Western World series. Now, I’ve read other books from this series without ill effect. But something with the tiny-sized print, the double-columns per page, the two-hundred sentence paragraphs, well, it all just perfect-stormed it’s way into making my eyes – and my brain – strain terribly.

 

So I must with great reluctance set it aside.

 

I am coming up to the end of Volume II in 48 pages. My par is 10 pages a night, so I’ll continue with it throughout this upcoming week. The work itself has six volumes, so I’ll have made it through two complete volumes in six weeks. Not bad. I did learn a few interesting things about Gibbon, the History of the Decline, and the Roman Empire itself I will blog about in a few days. 

 

I originally had the idea (actually, Tolkien came to me in a dream and commanded me to take up the work) of reading The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the four months my oldest daughter will be studying abroad in Italy. Well, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. I’m getting heavy vibes that Little One would want me to switch over to modern, cutting-edge hard SF this spring, so, hey, that’s what I’m going to start. And with that will come more book reviews. Yay!

 

Happy reading to all, but don’t read so much you lose your eyesight!

Single Focused Mind

 

“We have seldom an opportunity of observing, either in active or speculative life, what effect may be produced, or what obstacles may be surmounted, by the force of a single mind, when it is inflexibly applied to the pursuit of a single object.”

 

Neat, really neat sentence from Chapter 21 of The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (page 316 in my Great Books of the Western World volume). I have thought this thought many times throughout my life, even wrote about it here in these electronic pages: What could I do with a hundred such men under my command? (Click on the link for the answer.)

 

And as applied to myself? Good Lord, I wanted to do too much that the force of this single mind became too diluted – write a paradigm-changing novel, discover the basic building block of the basic building blocks of matter (I still think it has something to do with the photon), re-write or re-discover history, compose something that will last long past I’ve lived, and on, and on, and on.

 

Still, though, the thought itself and the ideas behind it resonate very strongly and clearly with me on an almost daily basis. Nice and neat to see it in Gibbon’s 1781 work.

 

N.B. The mind in question regarding Gibbon’s quoted remark is Athanasius of Alexandria, a fourth century Christian theologian and Church Father noted for his tireless efforts to defeat Arianism. Perhaps later this week I’ll post a “workman’s guide to Christian heresies” regarding Arianism and Donatism, as I am somewhat hazy on the terms …